Recently in Other Half Category

I've reviewed 7 different Other Half beers... and they've all been some form of IPA. Excellent IPA. Well behaved IPA. Lovable IPA. In today's hop-obsessed beer environment, that's not all that unusual (and I am not complaining!), but it would be nice to see how their chops translate to other styles. Enter this little stout that originates from a beer called Short, Dark & Handsome, an American stout made with UK Fuggle and East Kent Golding hops. Take that, add coffee, vanilla, and cocoa powder, and you've got Short, Dark & Wired. I feel like non-barrel-aged stouts have gotten short shrift of late, so let's take a walk down that lane:

Other Half Short, Dark & Wired - Pours a deep, very dark brown color with a finger of tan head. Smells has some coffee notes, roast, maybe a hint of vanilla. Taste hits those coffee notes harder than the nose would have you believe, moderate roast, all tempered by a sweet vanilla cocoa flavor that is really quite pleasant and matches well with the coffee notes. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, smooth carbonation, sweet bite in the finish. Overall, this is a very good non-BA coffee stout. My traditional coffee ambivalence prevents hyperbole, but I'm enjoying this quite a bit. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7.4% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a snifter on 12/31/16. (No date on the can, I guess non-IPAs don't rate; it's a recent release though...)

Great, now I need to hunt down more in this vein. Many thanks to Kaedrin friend Nick for providing this can. I've actually had some good Other Half non-IPAs at shares or festivals and they're great, so I will most certainly need to nail down some more...

Time to check in with our friends up north. Other Half opened in 2014, but only started canning in February of this year. They built their reputation almost entirely on word of mouth, and that word is "excellent", so can releases tend to be pretty crowded affairs. Such is the way of Northeast IPA brewers, I guess. Fortunately, cans have been finding their way into my possession often enough to know that their hype is at least partially deserved. Will I be driving up to Brooklyn and waiting in line anytime soon? Probably not. But I know some people who do, and for that, I am grateful. Here are the four latest brews I've had from these folks, two single hop beers, a duo, and one of their staple triple IPAs.

Other Half Double Dry Hopped Double Mosaic Dream - Similar to regular Double Mosaic Dream, but with moar dry-hopping - Pours a hazy yellow gold color with a finger of white head, decent retention, and a little lacing. Smells great, tropical fruit, citrus hops, a little dank pine. Taste follows the nose, huge amounts of tropical fruit and citrus, mangoes, pineapples, and whatnot, sweet up front with a well balanced bitter note in the finish. Mouthfeel is perfect, well carbonated, tight, medium bodied. Overall, delicious. Not sure how different it is from the non double dry hopped version, but it's still exceptional! A

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/8/16. Canned 9/23/2016. Batch: Violently Hoppy.

Other Half Amarillo IPA - I love Amarillo, but have found it to be a poor choice as a bittering hop, so single-hop beers like this tend to suffer a bit because of that. - Pours a cloudy, dark yellow gold, almost brown, with a finger of white head. Smells very nice, sweet with lots of citrus hops. Taste starts off sweet with lots of citrus hop flavor, maybe a bit of pine, finishing with a sharp, astringent bitterness. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, crisp, and relatively dry. Overall this is rock solid stuff, one of the better Amarillo Single Hop beers around, but it still can't quite overcome Amarillo's sharp bittering character... B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a charente glass on 10/9/16. Canned: 9/23/16. Batch: Pretty Daddy.

Other Half All Green Everything - A triple IPA brewed with Motueka, Amarillo, Citra and Mosaic hops, this one certainly doesn't fall into the "Isn't this just a hoppy barleywine" trap that many TIPAs are susceptible to, even if it doesn't quite reach the top of that mountain. - Pours a mostly clear, dark, golden orange color with a finger of white head. Smells nice, sweet citrus and pine, with some floral, grassy notes too. Taste has a big malt backbone, hits a more dank piney aspect than the nose, but plenty of citrus, finishing with a well balanced and soft bitterness. Mouthfeel is medium to full bodied, well carbonated, but with a fair amount of boozy heat. A very good beer, but a little disappointing given its reputation. On the upper end of B+

Beer Nerd Details: 10.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a teku glass on 10/9/16. Canned: 9/22/2016. Batch: Best Coast.

Other Half Simcoe + Wai-Iti - I think this might have been my first Wai-Iti hopped beer ever, though it turns out that two of those Veil beers I recently posted about also had them. It certainly has that New Zealand flare to it and works well enough for me, though I'd like to try more. This combo with Simcoe worked out quite nicely. - Pours a pale, almost clear yellow color with a finger of head and great retention. Smells great, sweet, candied citrus and pine hops, nice and dank, as Simcoe is wont to be. Taste has more Wai-Iti hop influence, much more tropical than your typical Simcoe, though you get a bit of that Simcoe dankness, and a good sweetness/bitterness balance. Mouthfeel is perfect, light to medium bodied, well carbonated, dangerously quaffable. Overall, this is awesome. A

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/14/16. Canned: 9/22/2016. Batch: Yeast Coast.

Phew, I think that's enough IPA reviews for the time being (only 8 over the course of two posts!). No more Other Half in the immediate pipeline, but you will almost certainly be hearing about them again soon. Indeed, I hope to perhaps try something that's not an IPA at some point...

One feature most of these newfangled Northeast IPA brewers have is that they make, like, a hojillion different varieties of IPA. To all the normals out there, this must seem baffling in the extreme. How different can all these IPAs be? Us abnormal hop-sniffing degenerates know what's up though, and these two cans of Other Half that recently found their way to Kaedrin HQ are a pretty good example of distinction.

By all appearances, they're similar DIPAs with the major difference being the hops used. One a trendy Mosaic hopped beer, the other using more traditional Segal Ranch high-oil Cascades, but they come off very different. I mean, not night-and-day, but maybe night and twilight or something. No, I don't like this metaphor anymore. It's hacky and cliched. I'm the worst. Let's just look closer:

Other Half Double Mosaic Dream - First, that is one gorgeous label, eh? Pours a hazy straw yellow color with a finger of fluffy white head that leaves some lacing as I drink. Smells great, huge waft of tropical fruit, some resinous pine lurking in the background, sweet candied notes tying it together. Tastes delicious, sweet with that juicy tropical fruit up front, hints of pine in the middle, finishing with just enough bitterness to balance things out (definitely on the sweeter side of the IPA realm, but not at all cloying). Mouthfeel is medium bodied, finely carbed, and very well balanced. Overall, yeah, this is the stuff. Sometimes I feel like Mosaic is overrated, and people do tend to go a little too crazy of these hops, but beers like this show why pretty well. Best Other Half I've had yet. A

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 7/22/16. Canned 7/15/16. Batch: Double Downer.

Other Half Magic Green Nuggets - Another nice label, though sometimes the hops on the label look like... broccoli? Anywho, pours a clearer, darker, more golden yellow color with finger of fluffy white head, similar lacing. Smells a little more subdued, sweeter but with a lesser citrus and pine quality. Taste is very sweet, but with a cleaner, more earthy, floral character in addition to the typical, old-school citrus and pine, a hint of booze in the finish. In general, a little more dank than the Mosaic, not really juicy. Mouthfeel is bigger and heavier, but still nice, well carbed, a little more out of whack and boozy, but still quite well crafted. Overall, this is decent, but it reminds me of something more older school. Victory's Ranch S (i.e. another single hopped DIPA with Segal Ranch Cascades) comes to mind, though this is just as good if not better. Indeed, this feels like there might even have been a different yeast in use (producing a cleaner, clearer beer, similar in many ways to the type of stuff Victory produces). Tasty double IPA, well worth trying, but there are easier to acquire analogs out there. B+*

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 7/22/16. Canned 7/15/16. Batch: Kazaam!

Many thanks to fellow BeerNerd Sheik for making the long trip to Brooklyn and waiting in line for these beauties. Other Half is clearly the real deal and if I didn't have Tired Hands in my backyard, I'd probably be seeking this sort of thing out more often. As it is, I'm still going out of my way to snag their stuff, so there is that. You will no doubt hear more about them soon.

* But you rated Victory's Ranch S an A-!? Two answers to this: 1. Grade inflation is real and b) I'm the worst. This has been established.

Ok Mark, be cool. This is totally a Soulja Boy reference. The artwork even has stacks of money flying everywhere. Don't start talking protocol stacks or data structures, LIFO, FIFO for your life. Oh. Wait, crap, I just did exactly what I wasn't supposed to, didn't I? I'm the worst. Quick, change the subject! Beer, we're supposed to be talking about beer!

So I was just talking about the recent-ish emergence of great brewing in NYC, and Other Half is certainly on that list, lining up NYCers for blocks on end to get a taste of their Northeast IPA flare. I had the good fortune to sample a few of their brews at ACBF last year, and a friend generously gifted me this can, a lovely little Northeast DIPA number made with Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado hops. I'll take it!

Other Half Stacks On Stacks - Pours a pale, slightly hazy golden yellow color with a finger of white head. Smells fabulous, huge citrus hop component with lots of tropical fruit, grapefruit, pine, and the like. Taste follows that nose up front, then diverges into more floral hop notes before hitting a nice bitter hop finish. No date on the can, but this is clearly pretty fresh. Moughfeel is medium bodied and well carbonated, still quaffable, hints of stickiness as it warms. Overall, yep, it's a hum-dinger of a DIPA, and I can see why this stuff is sought after. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounces). Drank out of a Charente glass on 5/6/16.

So yes, I need to get me some more Other Half, and you will most certainly be seeing more of them on this blog soon enough.